Educational Philosophy

We strive to make Red Barn a place that empowers children to make choices, provide a safe venue for children to take risks, and foster a positive haven for children to express themselves.

Our curriculum reflects a diverse community of learners that honors all individual learning styles. We create an atmosphere where children love learning and experience a sense of wonder about the way things work. Red Barn supports a philosophy that is respectful of family, culture, and community. We value the cooperative experience in which a parent's skillsets are actively involved in their child's learning.

Our Curriculum in Action

Nature’s Scavenger Hunt

Children became detectives for the day, scouring the great outdoors with a magnifying glass to find worms, insects and other small creatures to bring back to school for further investigation. They helped catalog their findings by making a list of everything we collected, from millipedes and caterpillars to grubs and pill bugs.

Sprouting Seeds

After observing plants growing in the garden, one of our students drew a diagram of a flower to help us learn all about the life cycle of a seed. Other children wrote out words using phonetic spellings and created their own images to depict each stage of plant growth, then took turns sharing their artwork in sequence to narrate the process step-by-step.

Tree and Bark Crafts

Integrating the indoors and outdoors is an important part of our curriculum to help children develop a lifelong love of nature and an understanding of our environment, among many other benefits. On one of our nature walks, children collected fallen tree bark and brought it into the classroom where we used oil pastels to create colorful masterpieces.